climate denial industry

Check this great list of the top 25 U.S. consumers of green energy.It is, first of all, a tribute to some good corporate citizens like Johnson & Johnson, as well as companies that have made being green part of their business strategy (Whole Foods, Starbucks).

It's also revealing the consumer No.1 is the U.S. Air Force, which is undoubtedly more interested in the reliability of power in a crisis than in joining Whole Foods' campaign to green up the environment. It makes the point - better than we could - that alternative energy is good policy for lots of reasons, even beyond the benefit of saving the planet.

Among major media figures in Canada, few people can claim as much credit as the National Post's Terrance Corcoran in the prolonged and woefully effective campaign to mislead the Canadian public on the science and policies regarding climate change.

As a business columnist in the Globe and Mail in the 1990s, Corcoran was reported to run shrieking into the managing editor's office any time a (well-documented) science story crept into the pages of what was then the nation's only national newspaper. As a result, the mid-level editors lived in fear and the environment reporters threw up their hands when asked why the Globe wasn't covering the story

Three days ago, it was revealed that Stephen Harper was joining George W. Bush in a North American death wish by withdrawing from the Kyoto process.

Yesterday, NASA scientists announced that 2005 had topped 1998 as the hottest year on record. In fact, one NASA researcher said it was likely that 2005 may have been the warmest in several thousand years. While the rest of the world scrambles to patch together the barest beginnings of a survival strategy, it seems clear that the alternative path blazed by the US and Australia, a followed by India, China and now Canada is becoming the non-stop route to climate hell.

The Tyee, a “fiesty” on-line magazine that loves tackling stories that the mainstream media overlook, has the definitive piece on the Harper Conservatives' plans for Kyoto - and it's bleak, bleak, bleak. Canada's new federal government (this is being written before the polls close, so we're making an assumption) is seated in the oil-soaked western province of Alberta and has been hostile to the Kyoto Protocol from the outset.

[A] study published last week in Nature showed, to everyone's astonishment that plants produce methane, a greenhouse gas… But while this study does nothing to threaten global warming theory … it should shake our confidence in one of our favourite means of tackling it: paying other people to clear up the mess we've made.

“We need leadership, and I don't think we're getting it,” said Russell Train, EPA chief under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, talking about global warming. “To sit back and just push it away and say we'll deal with it sometime down the road is dishonest to the people and self-destructive.”

According to reports only the current chief administrator stood up to defend President George W. Bush's record.

Harper argues - rightly - that Canada wasted the last decade while the Liberal government of then-prime minister Jean Chretien dithered over how to achieve Kyoto targets. Chretien's biggest fear during the late '90s was that he would further alienate Albertans, whose robust economy rests heavily on fossil fuels. Chretien was also denied his usual ally in Ontario, as the then-Conservative provincial government refused to participate in any negotiations on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.